College of Arts and Sciences

“THE EYE OF MY UNDERSTANDING”:

THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF GOD AND HUMAN COGNITION IN

THE REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE BY JULIAN OF NORWICH

A Paper

Presented in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Course

ENGL 374: English Literature to 1600

by

Nathon Leopold Hilton

November 21, 2018

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1. Introduction
Only few writers throughout the history of Christianity have had the sentimental prowess and
philosophical profundity to speak of theology, revelation, piety, and an active interaction with the
divine in the way that Julian of Norwich—the fourteenth-century anchoress—did in the late Middle
Ages. Phillip Sheldrake in his newly released work, Julian of Norwich: “In God’s Sight” Her Theology in
Context, even casts her as “one of most popular and influential spiritual figures of our times,”1 while
other scholars have called her a “difficult thinker” due how the intricacies present in her text that
blend mystical revelation and strands of philosophical theology.2
More specifically, she borrows her cataphatic approach to theology from the linguistic
tradition of St. Augustine who envisioned God as cognizable to humanity.3 Highly evocative in its
assertions about the Divine, Julian’s most prominent treatise, The Revelations of Divine Love, constitutes
a magnificent testimony of the contemplative approach to epistemology that governed the religious
milieu of late medieval England. Interestingly, its author approaches the themes of knowledge and
contemplative spirituality by appropriating and counteracting the philosophical avowals of other
mystics and theologians of her time.
However, little scholarship has been dedicated to delineating the core aspects of her
epistemology, which leaves many questions unanswered: What type of epistemology does Julian voice
in her writings? What assertions on human cognition lie at the core of her literature? To what degree
does the anchoress’s Book of Showings4 build on, challenges, or transforms the epistemology of St.
Augustine—her cataphatic predecessor?
Addressing these and other questions, I argue that Julian founds her epistemology on the
notion that God reveals himself in a highly personal and intimate manner. Noting the superb
philosophical influence of St. Augustine’ De Trinitate in Julian’s oeuvre, I assert that Julian’s Book of
Showings voices the idea that humans, by employing their intellect, can attain knowledge of the
Trinitarian God who is both “Maker” and “Helper” to every person. In declaring God cognizable,
she portrays herself cognizant of the divine entity and the attributes that shape His actions, as
attested in the Augustinian tradition. However, Julian’s mystical spirituality allows her to develop a
distinctive cataphatic approach that subverts St. Augustine’s epistemic assertions. By modifying
Augustine’s approach to the senses, she articulates an innovative understanding of human cognition
that renders God available to the believer. Thus, her text gives life to the idea that humanity can

1 Phillip Sheldrake, Julian of Norwich: “In God’s Sight” Her Theology in Context (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2019),
viii.
Jacqueline Jenkins and Nicholas Watson, “Preface” in The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Shown to A Devout
2

Woman and a Revelation of Love (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), ix.
In this context, cataphatic (Gr. Positive or affirming) refers a type of theological discourse that emphasizes God’s
3

cognoscibility (opp. to God’s transcendence) by speaking of the divine through affirmations. In a more philosophical
sense, Augustine as well as Julian can be considered cataphatic theologians because they are “willing to engage both
rational analysis and vivid imagination in [their] contemplative practice.” See Victoria Maria Rolf, An Explorer’s Guide to
Julian of Norwich (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2018), 15. Julian and Augustine’s cataphaticism stands contrary
to the apophaticism (i.e. speaking of God by way of denials or negations) of the British mystics of Julian’s time; namely,
John Scotus Erigena, Walter Hilton, or the anonymous author of the Cloud of Unknowing. See Stephen Greenblatt, ed.,
“Julian of Norwich” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages, 10th ed. (London: W. W. Norton &
Company, 2018), 431; and Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1995), 35.
4 In this paper, I use the title Revelations of Divine Love interchangeably with Book of Showings to indicate the longer text

of Julian’s oeuvre that deals with the visions she received in 1373.
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become cognizant of God by manner of God’s own way of relating to humans within the limitations
of the senses.
1. The Intelligibility of God in Julian’s Work
The first line of Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love adamantly characterizes the Trinitarian God
of the Christian tradition as an intellectually perceptible agent who makes himself manifest to
humanity. Thus, the anchoress displays the foundations of her epistemology by evocatively
declaring, “This is a Revelation of Love that Jesus Christ, our endless bliss, made in Sixteen
Shewings, or Revelations particular. Of the which the First is of His gracious crowning with thorns;
and therewith was and apprehended and specified the Trinity… with many fair shewings of endless
wisdom.”5 In this passage, Julian articulates that the Trinity becomes “apprehended and specified”
through the “shewings of endless wisdom” that God materialized before her. Thus, her
proclamation that Jesus Christ “made” himself manifest in “Sixteen Shewings” shows that God—or
at least that which God chooses to reveal—is apprehensible to the human intellect.
In addition, as the evocative use of the word “shewing” suggests, Julian’s inaugural phrase
centers her writings around the notion that her book constitutes a literary and theological effort to
enlighten her audience’s knowledge of the divine. The fact that the word “revelation” or “shewing”
in Julian’s context meant a type of “disclosure… by divine or supernatural means,” 6 suggests that
Julian conceived her writings as a way of actively disclosing knowledge of God to her fellow
believers by writing God’s “Shewings, or Revelations particular.”7 Similarly to St. John the Divine
who starts his “Revelation of Jesus Christ” by saying that God made himself manifest in visions,
Julian opens her book by claiming that God possesses the divine power to reveal himself through
manner of visions and showings.8 Hence, just as in John’s Revelation, the word choice of Julian’s
introduction upholds the notion that both God and his manifestation are intelligible to humankind.
In Julian’s literature, God is knowable, cognizable, and comprehensible; his love becomes intelligible
as he manifests himself to the believer.
2. Echoing St. Augustine’s De Trinitate
Furthermore, in portraying God as a cognizable entity, The Revelations of Divine Love echoes St.
Augustine’s belief in the intellectual apprehensibility of God’s divine substance. Calling to mind
Augustine’s theological formulations in De Trinitate, Julian’s writings voice the idea that humans are
indeed able to apprehend various aspects of God’s divinity through the activity of the intellect.9 So,
Julian narrates, “I desired to learn assuredly…. in this desire for a singular Shewing…. And then was

5 Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, ed. Grace Harriet Warrack (Cambridge, MA: Harvard College Library,

2005), 1.
6 OED Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), s.v. “Revelation, def. A1a.”

www.oed.com/view/Entry/164694. Accessed 2 November 2018.

7 Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, 1.
8 The phrase appears both in Rev. 1:1 and Norwich, Revelations, 1. For more on how the writings of St. John the
Divine influenced the conception of spirituality and ascension of medieval mystics, see Jeffrey M. Hamburger, St. John the
Divine: The Deified Evangelist in Medieval Art and Theology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002).
9 A concept later refuted during the Iberic counterreformation in the writings of St. John of the Cross and St.
Teresa of Avila. For more on the differences on the concept of spirituality between Julia of Norwich, St. John of the
Cross, and St. Teresa of Avila, see Gillian T. W. Ahlgren, Enkindling Love: The Legacy of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross
(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), 115.
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I answered in my reason, as it were a friendly intervenor.”10 In the vein of Augustine’s belief that the
mind reflects God’s truth,11 Julian asserts that knowledge of God can come through intellectual
“understanding,” for indeed it is through human “reason” that God answers her desire to learn of
him and his actions.12 As both Augustine and Julian suggest, reason, that “friendly intervenor” and
lovely mediator, is what cracks open the mysteries of God when Julian engages her “rational analysis
and vivid imagination” to understand what God puts in her visions.13
In this context, Julian appears as the one who, in the words of St. Augustine, “[has] been
able to direct the keen gaze of [her] intellects beyond everything created… to attain, in however
small a measure… unchanging truth…. [namely] the sublime and unchanging substance of God by
things that are made.”14 Thus, in Augustine’s writings as well as in Julian’s, the mind becomes the
tool through which humanity achieves knowledge of God, “however small a measure,” by means of
setting one’s “keen,” spiritual gaze upon God himself.15 As Augustine indicates, Christians can grasp
the “sublime substance” of God through mental discernment. Ergo, recalling this particular aspect
of Augustine’s patristic epistemology, Julian sets herself to behold God’s “many fair showings of
endless wisdom” in order to better apprehend the self-manifestation that renders the Trinity both
knowable and intellectually available.16
3. The Eye as a Point of Cognition
Nevertheless, despite the connections between Augustine’s formulations and Julian’s
reflections, there are many differences between their understanding of how physical sight elucidates
a person’s intellectual understanding of God. For one thing, Augustine denies that physical visions
can be effective ways of knowing God. Thus, in De Trinitate, he introduces the notion that
knowledge of the divine cannot come through mere visual manifestations. According to Augustine,
humans can only attain knowledge by employing the rationality of the soul. Commenting on the
biblical account of Christ’s ascension in the book of Acts, Augustine writes, “So it was necessary for
Christ… to be removed from [the apostle’s] sight, since as long as they could observe it they would
think that Christ was only that which they saw.”17 As this passage lays out, for Augustine, “sight”
confines the manifestation of Christ, and ultimately, the manifestation of the Trinity. In his thought,
God removes physical appearances, even the body of Christ himself, to not confine people’s
knowledge to that “which they saw.”18
Consequently, Augustine holds that the only visual manifestation that can fully and perfectly
express God in order to render knowledge of him lies at the eschaton. As scholar Lewis Ayres notes
of Augustine’s theology, Augustine sustains the idea that “Christ wished that the only limit set to our

10 Norwich, Revelations, 70.

11 Joan M. Nuth, “Human Nature: The Image of God” in The Showings of Julian of Norwich, edited by Denise N. Baker

(London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005), 177.

12 Norwich, Revelations, 21.
13 Victoria Maria Rolf, An Explorer’s Guide to Julian of Norwich, 15.
14 Augustine of Hippo, The Trinity, translated by Edmund Hill (New York: New City Press, 1991), 167.
15 Ibid.
16 Norwich, Revelation, 1.
17 Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 152.
18 Ibid.
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faith… [was] the eschatological sight of the Trinity.”19 Thus, in Augustine’s conceptualizations, the
only type of sight that has the potential to impart true knowledge of God lies in Christ’s apocalypses
(gr. Revelations) at the end of time. For him, the fact that the senses “cannot contemplate the
eternal ideas (aeterna rationes)” prior to the eschaton, makes all bodily sight futile when inferring any
knowledge of God.20 The visual revelations of Christ and the Trinity remain incomplete in rendering
true knowledge of God because they ultimately enclose the individual’s understanding of the divine
instead of opening it to God’s essential reality which lies beyond the material world.
Notwithstanding, contrary to Augustine’s discreditations of the epistemic value of bodily
visions and physical manifestations, The Revelations of Divine Love presents Julian’s visionary
“showings” as the main venue through which God manifests himself to the anchoress. Early on in
her writings, Julian develops the idea that her visions, captured through her “bodily eye” and
scrutinized through the “ghostly” eye of her “understanding,” are the venue through which she
gained all her knowledge of the divine.21 Describing the key moment of her first vision, she declares,
My curate was sent for to be at my ending, and before he came I had set up my eyen and
might not speak. He set the cross before my eyes and said: “I have brought the image of thy
savior; look thereupon and comfort thee therewith….” [I]n this suddenly I saw the red
blood running down from under the garland, hot and freshly…. And in the same showing
suddenly the Trinity fulfilled my heart most of joy…. For the Trinity is God, God is the
Trinity. The Trinity is our maker… helper… our everlasting lover.22
Interestingly, even before she engages with the supernatural revelation of Christ crucified, gushing
blood “hot and freshly,” Julian states to have already set her bodily “eyen” upon the crucifix in order
to gain knowledge of the divine “comfort” that comes through the cross. The idea that the act of
visually beholding the cross and the vision thereof can render knowledge of the Trinity as the
anchoress’s “Maker” and “Helper” proves that Julian sees her bodily eye set upon the “ghostly”
showing as the point through which she is able to attain spiritual insight on the Trinity. The passage
points out that by Julian’s act of beholding the perplexing images of Christ’s passion makes the
divine phenomenon understandable and intelligible before her eyes. So, by visually beholding
Christ’s blood running down the garland, Julian is able to cognitively apprehend God’s trinitarian
role as a “helper,” a “maker,” and an “everlasting lover.”23 In this context, Julian’s visual encounter
with Christ’s blood apprehended by her bodily eye functions as the first experience through which
Julian gains knowledge of the divine.
4. Adapting and Contrasting Julian and St. Augustine’s Epistemology
Thus, Julian’s discussion on the role of the bodily eye as the starting point of human
cognition subverts the observations of St. Augustine who considered bodily sight as incomplete. In
Julian’s text, the eye becomes the focal point of cognition for the mystical author who sought to
make known the knowledge she received of God through the divine showings. While Augustine

19 Ibid., 153.
20 Luigi Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 45.
21 Norwich, Revelations, 177.
22 Ibid., 6, 8.
23 Ibid.
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suggestively disregards bodily sight as “carnal” deeming it “lust with another name,”24 Julian
understands sight as a limited but yet potential way to render knowledge. Although to both
Augustine and Julian the “ghostly eye” can be “blind” by the “weight of our mortal flesh and
darkness of sin,” for Julian “bodily sight” remains a justified way of knowledge because God can use
“reason” to elucidate the vision and help to “see more clearly.”25 Thus, God becomes the ultimate
agent that grants true vision to the eye since he is the one who “openeth the eye of…
understanding.”26
In addition, in Julian’s affective writings, divine intervention is what makes the eye transcend
its limitations. In the words of Suzannah Biernoff, because of God, “the eye… is transformed from
an opaque bodily organ into an object and instrument of knowledge.”27 To Julian, God becomes the
One who wills to reveal himself in sight to allow people to behold him. After all, according to
Julian’s text, God is the only one who “of His goodness He openeth the eye of our understanding”
to receive knowledge and insight.28 It is thus that Julian presents an late medieval, alternative
epistemology to the one that Augustine presents in De Trinitate. The description of Julian’s visions
assert that God both provides the vision and the understanding that yield knowledge of his
attributes and “properties.”29
5. Final Remarks
Both Julian and Augustine assert that knowledge of God is possible if believers set
themselves to understand God through the intellect. However, in Julian’s understanding, contrary to
Augustine’s, vision and reason are partners in the person’s quest for knowing God. To Julian, “God
does not become present to human consciousness the way that an object in the concrete world is
said to be present.”30 That is, through reason. In her sight, the reason which scrutinizes the objects
of one’s world is only partial to discern the love that lies at the core all divine revelation. Thus, in her
epistemology, she asserts that the bodily eye, which facilitates a personal and concrete encounter
with God, also serves to yield knowledge of the divine in all its property of love and virtue. As the
intensely personal language of her writings suggest, there is a deep connection between the believer’s
eye, reason, and the God of divine love who manifests himself in divine showings. However, God’s
activity is what makes the difference. Knowledge of God is always attainable through the
intervention of God himself who manifests his manner of love in showings before the eye; an
experience which becomes apprehended through the intellect. Thus, Julian grounds her
epistemology upon God himself, reason, and the visual encounters she has with the manifestations
of Divine Love. That Divine love, which as both Julian and St. John declare, “has freed us from our

Suzannah Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages: Ocular Desires (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan,
24

2002), 105.
25 Norwich, Revelation, 176, 22.
26 Ibid., 123.
27 Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, 81.
28 Norwich, Revelation, 123.
29 Ibid., 64.
30 Bernard McGinn, “Introduction” in The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism (New York: Modern Library, 2006),
xv.
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sins by his blood”31; blood gushing “hot and freshly” apprehended through the eye of
understanding.32

Bibliography

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31 Rev. 1:5.
32 Norwich, Revelations, 8.
 Hilton 7

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